


Just A Promise

by torianmist



Category: Avengers (Comic), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Crying, Emotional release, M/M, Mentions of past abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-10
Updated: 2012-04-10
Packaged: 2017-11-03 10:25:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/380364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/torianmist/pseuds/torianmist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Letting go of the chains of the past for the promise of the future</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just A Promise

**Author's Note:**

> For Cat, who gave me the most beautiful of prompts that pushed me to write more than fluff and porn again. Thank you.

Two weeks of heat had settled over New York in a canopy of heavy clouded monochrome skies and near tangible tendrils of wet air. The silence in the living room was thick and absolute as though even sound had been beaten back by the weather. Steve felt stupefied, his every breath coming as if it were being pulled through the fetid water of the Hudson. The encroaching night was doing nothing to abate the heat and the atmosphere was close and thick and exacted in Steve a feral edginess. He sat tense and alert, every sense he had trained on the silhouette of the man standing by the long windows. Dark shadowed and unmoving, Tony was a symphony of silence.

Shiny, smooth, metallic. Long lines with no edges for things like emotion to catch and snag on. That's how Steve saw the world looking at Tony but he knew there was a man underneath. A man who felt so much, who would bleed red if you cut him; who Steve had never seen do so, but whom he knew would cry if you hurt him deep enough. A man who had been quiet and still and so unlike himself in the past few days that even the air surrounding him had become thick and dense with unspoken coils of disquiet. A man who turned suddenly and wordlessly left the room. Tony could move swiftly when he needed and by the time Steve reacted, the man was nowhere to be found.

The pall of negative energy that had stealthilyspread itself over Tony like a miasma of blackened ash was now stealing itself around Steve's throat as a scarf of unfavorable material. A glance at the team calendar showing an unprecedented empty block of three days under Tony's name. A five minute questioning of a reluctant to answer Jarvis whose eyes cautioned more than his words, had Steve moving rapidly up to the topmost floor of the mansion. Climbing stairs that wound snakelike and ponderous to a door weathered with age, Steve pushed lightly and entered the attic space.

Twilight threw shadows upon the chaotic pattern of furniture. Dust motes hung in the purple light, gossamer strands of webs haloed with gold. Tony sat on the floor his legs folded under him surrounded by old and faded couch cushions. Head bowed, the nape of his neck pale and vulnerable, thick hair curling slightly, he hunched over an opened chest. Photographs scattered around him like discarded bird wings. A glance at the date and the screaming headlines of the loss of a titan and his wife on the accompanying yellowed newspaper cuttings, and Steve closed his eyes. Pain and emphatic loss for his lover clutching at him like a vise grip. 

'Steve”.

Just his name. A plea. A need and Steve was by Tony's side before the final vowel was uttered. Steve stepped in close enough to kneel and to reach out and take Tony's hand.

“Look at at me Tony,”

Dark eyes with a storm in them to match the one which nature was conjuring outside briefly met his before skittering away. It was here then, the metaphorical storm that always that had been brewing inside his lover for days. Steve placed a finger under Tony's chin and lifted his face gently.

“Look at me” He whispered.

Dark eyes lifted to his, long lashes damp and low. And the storm broke.

Tony's loud sob rent the stillness of the room and he fell into Steve's arms. The force of his movement collapsed them both to the cushions. Tony laying bodily on top of Steve. His chest heaved as he griped Steve's t-shirt forcefully and buried his face in his neck, soaking his skin with wet salt. Steve wrapped both his arms and legs around the man on top of him and held him close as he shattered in his arms. For what seemed like hours Steve ran his fingers through Tony's hair and across his back as his lover railed at all seven heavens. Steve's own eyes filled with tears that spilled over as Tony cried out over every time his father had raised his hand to him. How his father had told him he was too 'beautiful' to be a "real man" and how Tony had tried so damn hard to prove him wrong. How all he had wanted was for someone to hold him, to tell him a bedtime story. To comfort him when he fell, to be there when he bought projects home from school.. How when he was sent to boarding school the pain had worsened for the small boy with no-one to protect him. How scared and adrift he felt as a child. How he had been alone too long before Steve came. Steve held tight. Promised he would never leave. Would always be there. Would love him in this world and the next. 

Tony became a dead weight in Steve's arms and he realized that the exhausted man molded so tightly to him had cried himself out. Loosening his hold a little, Steve turned his head to look at him. Tear tracks stained Tony's face and the long dark eyelashes that rested on his flushed cheekbones were still damp, but the lines of pain that had etched his face for the past days had smoothed out and he was breathing evenly. Swiping the back of his hand roughly over his face, Tony sat up.

“Sorry.” He mumbled. “Not what I wanted you to see.”

Steve swallowed a ball of frustration and turned Tony's face to him.

“No.” He said sharper than he meant and winced at the way Tony jerked back. 

He moderated his voice.

“No,” He repeated. “Don't hide from me, Tony. Not from me.”

A pressure he didn't know was there uncoiled from his heart as Tony smiled tentatively. His voice when it came was low and rough from crying.

“I have nothing left to hide, Steve.” He said quietly. “You know it all. I'm fully yours now.”

Steve looked into the blue eyes that were anxiously searching his. His returning smile seemed to relieve the still emotionally raw man in front of him. Running a finger down Tony's cheek and taking his face in his hands; Steve moved in and pressed a soft kiss on the corner of his mouth, delighting in Tony's sharp inhalation of breath and the way his lips parted instinctively. Sweet and gentle, a relearning of sorts. Steve accepted the hesitancy of Tony's mouth. Tongue languid and seeking. Pulling slowly away, Tony reached into his pocket and pulled out a length of gold. Elegant links held prisoner a circle of burnished, solid metal.

Not looking up, Tony unclasped the necklace.

“The chain was Howard's” He began, slow and hesitant. “The ring was my grandfather's.”

Raising his eyes. So deep and so full of the fear of rejection. Steve never wanted to see Tony look at him with that fear. Opening his mouth, he was silenced by Tony's fingers, warn and real on his lips.

“Let me, let me finish. Please?”

Steve nodded. His mind in free fall as Tony pulled the ring off the links, letting the chains of the past fall. Taking Steve's hand he looked up shyly and Steve saw him swallow hard and force his fears down as he slipped the ring onto Steve's finger.

“Just a promise.” He whispered.

Blinking hard and pushing down a need to pull the man to him and claim him with all the need and desire that was building in him, Steve took Tony's hand in his and kissed Tony's own ring finger.

“One I'll hold you to for the rest of our lives.” He murmured.

Linking their hands he pulled Tony back down to the cushions and cradled him against his chest.  
Running a hand through his hair, Steve pressed a kiss into the mass of tangled curls on Tony's head and tugging the man in his arms closer to him swore to himself that if anyone, man or woman so much as thought of laying their hands on this man without his permission again, he would kill them. Tony had given himself to him now, mind, body and soul and no-one, be they real or ghost was going to take that from him.

“Mine” He whispered into the still night.

“Yours” Came the whispered breath of the man he held tightly to him. “Always.”

**


End file.
